Do You Feel Lucky?

You should.

Four years ago this week, the area was devastated by a major flood. Or so it seemed.

It is true that Downtown Marietta, and other parts of the city, along with some communities along the Little Kanawha River in Wood County, were under water.

Businesses were closed, some for several weeks, a large number of people lost homes, and there was millions of dollars in damage.

But in most of Wood and Washington Counties, roads were driveable. The areas where there wasn't high water had electric power. And. most importantly, there was no loss of life.

I admit, in my 30 years of living in this area, I've never lived anywhere where I've been dramatically affected by flood waters. I've always been fortunate enough to live somewhere where I'm on high enough ground.

But everyone who lives in the Mid-Ohio Valley should feel fortunate we were spared damage from high winds, the remnants of Hurricane Ike, that affected other parts of West Virginia and Ohio this past week. Much of the effects are still being felt by people in those areas as this blog is being posted.

Our area did have some fallen trees, from the evidence from photographs some of our viewers have shared with us. And some areas were without power, perhaps overnight. But it isn't as bad as it's been in the cities of Columbus and Cincinnati, where a lot of people were expected to be without power for most of the week. The pictures from those cities show home after home with fallen trees in their front yards. In West Virginia and our area, there were communities that were without power Sunday night, although most of those were back in service Monday.

I tuned to a Cincinnnati radio station Monday morning, to hear the post-mortem on my football team. What I heard instead was a long list of school closings and cancellations that could have sounded like it was the middle of January instead of September. There were no such cancellations here.

Maybe in some cases, Hurricane Ike was as devastating as Hurricane Ivan was four years ago. But not here. And that's something for which we can thank our lucky stars.

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